


Mourning

by Harukami



Category: DRAMAtical Murder
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-01
Updated: 2014-03-01
Packaged: 2018-01-14 04:27:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1252828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harukami/pseuds/Harukami
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set on the true route. Several people are mourning, several people are struggling with death, and Clear doesn't understand mortality -- he just knows it's frightening, and doesn't want any more people to die.</p><p>@Tigerine on tumblr asked me to try my hand at Mink/Clear so I decided to take a run at something with this.</p><p>ETA: Sequel can be found here: <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/2691047">Recovery</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mourning

It's a dubious victory. The tower's destroyed, Toue's dead (Clear hears Aoba answer Mink that it seems he chose to end his own life), his power is broken, and the residential district is saved. But Ren is gone, and Aoba is heartbroken, which is enough to make it hardly a victory at all. He wants to crowd close to Aoba, to try to help him, but he closes his mouth around his impulsive, _Master, Master, what can I do?_

There's nothing he can do. He knows that much, and recognizes the grief Aoba is going through. Aoba's his Master, but they don't know each other so well yet, and so he steps back to give Aoba the room he needs, lets Koujaku fill his role as Aoba's closest friend and stay close to him, hold him.

It puts Clear back with the others, and he looks them over to see how they're reacting. Noiz has a sort of irritated patience in his eyes; it doesn't look like he intends to give up on getting what he wants from Aoba, not from the way he's watching him, but knows now isn't the time. Hopefully he knows it won't be the time for a while.

He glances at Mink next, and feels something go still inside him.

There's no reason for anyone to be looking at Mink; perhaps that's why he allows himself to look the way he does. He looks exhausted, and ...finished. It's the only real descriptor that comes to mind when Clear looks at him, and it's familiar. His grandfather looked like that in the last week or so before he never woke up again. 

Death is scary. Clear knows that much. It's a great question mark in his mind, a big empty thing on which he has no built-in information about, a thing that had meant that once there was a person in his life who loved him, and took care of him, and taught him things, and they laughed together and ate together and did things together, and now that person isn't there. Isn't anywhere. It's something that feels enormous every time he thinks about it and he can't really bring himself to believe it. He thinks of his grandfather in the ground and still imagines him reacting to things, enjoying the ocean, even though he knows that's not possible. It's not like when he was broken before, when his grandfather repaired him, and his mental circuit still worked inside the shell of his body; he knows that. But it's too big and too confusing and too painful to just think 'he's gone forever, and I will never see him again', and he shies away from the idea every time.

It's not something anyone should have happen if it's avoidable. While they can still live on. Clear feels that way; there's someone like Toue, who needed to be stopped however it was, and that's still a scary thought. Someone like Mink, who joined them, who helped them -- why does he look like that?

Aoba's decided to go home; Koujaku is taking him. Clear tells Aoba, "Master, I'll come by later, okay?" and Aoba gives him a halfhearted smile and nods.

Noiz leaves. Mink, too, turns to go.

"Mink-san," Clear says.

"What?"

"Shall I walk with you?"

"No."

"Ehh," Clear says. "I'm going to walk with you, however?"

Mink gives him a baleful look. It's obviously intended to frighten, but it doesn't work. It's absolutely impossible that Mink could actually hurt him; he's too strong, and too fast, and doesn't have the disadvantages of a human. "I said no," Mink says.

Still, he pretends fear, because fear is what a human would feel at a time like this. "Ehhh, what a scary look! Mink-san, that's too scary! Please stop!"

"Tch." Mink turns away again. "How annoying."

"Then I will walk with you," Clear says, cheery, and falls into step beside him.

Mink seems like he's going to argue again, but doesn't; lets out a sigh, and walks. They walk through the Northern District, but he doesn't seem to be going anywhere in particular -- Clear is sure Mink's base is somewhere around here, from where he'd heard his Master's voice before, but Mink isn't walking with any intent. Wherever he'd been planning to go to do this, it's not there. 

"Mink-san, come with me!" Clear says, abruptly.

"Haaah?"

"Let's get out somewhere nicer! There's something I want to show you."

The look on Mink's face has become almost long-suffering, but that hard resignation, the eyes of a man who is examining an upcoming death, is still there. This is really very impulsive, Clear thinks, but what can he do? He's already stepped in to try to stop this, as if he understands enough of anything to do so. 

He leads the way through the winding streets, walking at a brisk pace, fast enough that Mink has to hurry to keep up. He knows it's probably suspicious, but he feels like if he doesn't keep Mink moving to his pace, Mink will disappear into one of those alleys, and then their victory will be even hollower than it already is. Suspicious or not, he's at least breathing hard, his body designed to maintain a believable amount of human strain, as they climb the steps to the temple area where he's seen festival lights dancing in the past, though he'd never been permitted to attend. And beyond that, to the hill he had long seen in the distance from his window back home, and beyond that too to the next hill over.

The view is beautiful, the ocean stretching wide, the sun glistening off it. Out here, the breeze comes fresh instead of trapped and changed by the Midorijima city streets. Clear tilts his head back, takes a deep breath in, lets it out.

"This is what you wanted to show me?" Mink says, unimpressed.

"Yes," Clear says. "My grandfather lies under our feet."

Mink falls silent, taken aback. Clear glances over at him; the tint on his lenses makes his own face unreadable, he knows (and thank goodness for that), but he can see out perfectly fine, sees that hesitation come across Mink's face. It's a crack in the jagged wall he usually wears, and Clear feels guilty taking advantage of it, but nobody else should die from this. He doesn't want anyone to die if he can do anything. So he'll take a little advantage, then.

"He was old," Clear says. "One day he didn't wake up." He knows his tone, light and toneless, doesn't match the weight of what he's saying, but it doesn't match his feelings either. Even thinking about this still hurts. "He loved the ocean, so I thought that bringing him here would make him happy."

"The dead are gone," Mink says. "They leave their bodies, but go to the gods."

Clear ducks his head a little. "I don't know anything about that," he says. "And I didn't know what to do! Maybe you're right. But I just wanted to do what would make him happy."

There's a long silence again, and then Mink lets out another of those aggravated sighs. "What does this have to do with me?" he says. "This is idiotic. I'm leaving."

"I just thought," Clear stammers, and he doesn't know what he thought, really, doesn't know why he thought his own loss would have any impact on another person, "since Mink-san is planning to not wake up, but it's -- you're awake right now. I mean, you're alive right now. There's so much more life you could be living, and not everyone gets to."

"That's got nothing to do with me," Mink says, and he turns to go.

Clear lets him leave, or pretends to; he waits until Mink is out of a human's earshot and follows behind him like that, across building tops and keeping his footsteps in his ears. He follows him back to a building that must be Scratch's headquarters -- which seems odd, under the circumstances, since it had seemed that he hadn't intended to go there, but there it is. He listens in on it -- Mink ordering people around, answering no questions -- and settles in on the rooftop. 

***

Time passes. Clear does, as promised, visit Aoba. He hasn't turned the allmate back on; Clear understands. He thinks, if he ever were erased like that, he wouldn't want to be turned back on either. His body is just a shell, much more than a human's is, and his self is contained inside it very literally. But if that self, that circuit were erased, he wouldn't want the factory defaults, which existed before his Grandfather reprogrammed him, to live in his place. He can't tell Aoba this, not without revealing his secret, so he just says, "I understand, Master. Ren-san would understand too." and then tries to hold Aoba when his tears well up.

He spends a lot of time over there, singing on Aoba's rooftop at night to try to help him sleep, but he spends other times over at Scratch's. It's not like Aoba's house is his home, and it's not like Aoba has accepted himself as Clear's Master, either. Returning to his empty home, where he had been instructed to sleep and broke the instructions to go meet his Master, feels like a sad and empty thing, the bottom floor silent. In a way, stalking Mink over at Scratch's place is a relief from that, because although he doesn't know if the preparation has passed for Mink, or if he's in a state still like that week before his Grandfather went, he hears Mink doing things and not being dead yet.

Mostly, Mink seems to be trying to break up Scratch. They don't seem to want to, and are somewhat disregarding his discipline. They are especially verbal about how Mink isn't backing that up anymore, and Mink snarls back that he doesn't need to keep assholes in line when he doesn't intend to have anything to do with them. It's that kind of situation. Eventually, after some weeks of this attempted change, Mink gives up. He snarls, "Do what you want," and Clear hears him pack things in the room that he spends enough time in that it must be 'his room', and then he leaves.

Clear follows him again, curious; it's promising that Mink took his belongings, because even if it means he doesn't intend to go back there again, it means he intends to go somewhere that belongings have meaning. He follows for some time before Mink stops abruptly.

"Don't follow me."

"Wah!" Clear is caught completely off guard; his foot slips, and he comes crashing down to the street below. "Ow ow ow ow owwwww... You knew?"

Mink looks down his nose at Clear disdainfully. "Tori saw you when we left."

"Wow." Clear sits up, claps his hands. "Clap clap clap! Good job, Tori-san!"

"Thank you," the allmate says, and preens.

With a sigh, Mink says, "What do you want?"

"I was wondering where you were going, Mink-san."

"It's none of your business."

"That's why I was following you instead of asking outright," Clear agrees. 

Mink seems to find that impossible to argue with, actually rolls his eyes before closing them completely. "I have a flight I intend to catch."

"A flight?"

"I'm returning to my homeland," Mink says briefly. "There's nothing of interest left for me here."

"Ah!" Clear says, and claps his hands again, to express the smile Mink can't see through his mask. "Then, you've decided to live! That's good, Mink-san!"

A snort. "I'm not making any promises to that," he says. He shifts his bag -- it's small, just a single sack of belongings. Clear, who has filled his own home with everything that has caught his eye, has trouble imagining it. "...But whether I die or live, I don't want to do it here. That 'view'... whenever I go, now or later, I know what I want it to be."

"Mm..." It's a bit too wishy-washy for Clear's tastes, but at this point, it feels out of his hands. His Grandfather had never been able to see the view from the place Clear had buried him, even if that's why he'd buried him there. Maybe if Mink gets to see a view with the same significance, he'll want to live regardless, to keep being able to see it. "Perhaps I'll come visit you sometime."

"You won't find me," Mink says, with assurance.

"How awful! You won't give me the address?"

"I won't."

"That's terrible, Mink-san! And after we became friends!"

Mink makes a low grumble in his throat. "We haven't become friends," Mink says. "You're a weird-ass freak who decided to stick his nose into my business. If you even _have_ a nose."

"I don't know if I have one or not," Clear protests, "but I haven't put it in anyone's business, Mink-san! I just was concerned, concerned!"

"...You don't know if you have a nose."

"That really isn't the issue here, Mink-san."

Mink reaches for his mask, abrupt, and Clear isn't expecting it -- but he still has the time to step back. It's too fast to be human, and usually when he does that, people think they misunderstood what they saw. But Mink's eyes sharpen.

"...Mink-san?"

And then Mink advances on him. Clear backs up; there's a wall behind him, and darting to the side just drives him into a corner. He raises both hands defensively.

"Mink-san, please don't!"

"Take it off."

"I will not!"

Mink says, "What, is your curiosity the only one that deserves satisfaction?"

"Whether you're curious or not, I cannot take it off," Clear says. "Please, Mink-san. I cannot."

"I understand," Mink says. He pets Clear's head instead, which Clear allows with a sigh, relaxing. "But I don't care," he finishes, and rips the mask off.

It hurts -- not the pain of the straps caught in his hair, though he feels that, not the change in the tone of the light, though that stabs him too in how unexpected it is. It hurts to be exposed, to have his promises broken for him, to want to send Mink off with a smile and to be exposed as the monster he is instead. He tries to cover his face with his hands, letting out a sobbing, shocked breath.

Mink, holding his gas mask in one hand, looks at him. Then he says, in a tone that isn't even unkind, "What a fuss to make over such an ordinary face."

An ordinary face? The words don't even make sense. He knows his face isn't ordinary. If his face were ordinary, he wouldn't have worn a mask his entire life, wouldn't have worn it to sleep and to bathe and to eat along with his Grandfather, who had seen it before. "...Ordinary...?"

"And yes, you have a nose," Mink says, and tosses his mask at his feet. Clear ducks down immediately, grabs it, glances up at Mink again in confusion, his head whirling. There's no revulsion on Mink face, no shock or horror, just a sort of irritated impatience, like he didn't have time to waste on this.

Ordinary? It's impossible. He starts to lift the mask, hesitates. His mind's too heavy with thoughts and he doesn't know what to do. What does 'ordinary' mean? Does that mean, possibly, he looks like the people around him? Like Aoba, and Mink, and Noiz, and Koujaku, like Tae and Mizuki, like a human being with a forehead, cheeks, chin, nose, two eyes, a single mouth... Are they in the right place? Are they shaped correctly? Is their color right? Their texture? Does he look 'ordinary', like a person you wouldn't look twice at on the street?

He doesn't have a heart to be pounding but he feels a strange rush anyway, drowning out logical thought. There's no pace to this discovery, nothing to soothe the confusion. Was his Grandfather wrong? Was he mistaken? Or was he mistaken about what his Grandfather had intended? The thoughts pile over each other and he thinks of his Grandfather sleeping with no breath and wishes he could just ask him, wants to run back to him and beg for answers, but he can't.

"Wear it if you want. Don't if you don't," Mink says. "You're more attractive with it off, but there's no accounting for tastes."

Attractive? That's the opposite of what he thought this entire time. That even if people treated it as strange, it was a nicer thing than his face. He clutches his mask in both hands, raises it back up, clips it in place. The familiar sensation, the familiar sight of it around him makes relaxation happen almost instantly, dampens his whirling thoughts, though they don't go away, just quiet a little. He breathes through the familiar filter and shudders against his thoughts.

"I'm going," Mink says, and turns.

He has to shake off his own thoughts. "Mink-san!"

"What?"

"I will come visit you," Clear says. "I'll find you. Don't underestimate me. And when I do--" What can he say there? He doesn't know. Will he have a face he can show off then? Will he have decided to wear the mask, and should he tell Mink to get used to the idea? 

"You won't find me," Mink says, drawing the words out in his low growl. "But if you do, finish that sentence. Maybe you'll figure out your own intentions by then."

"Hmph," Clear says. Sulkiness seems like the safest course of action. "So rude, Mink-san! As if you can comment on figuring out intentions."

"Perhaps I will too," Mink says, with a raspy sigh, and walks.

This time, Clear doesn't follow him. He watches for the few moments it takes for Mink to vanish around the narrow twisting alleys, listens for a while longer, then turns and, moving his actual speed, runs through the city.

His grandfather's grave hasn't changed. It's not like he expected it to, but his feet slow regardless as he approaches it. He feels guilty, and a little scared, and he sits on it.

"I broke my promise today, Grandpa," he says. "I didn't mean to, but I did."

There's no response. He didn't expect one, but that's how it is. He puts a hand against the soil, hesitates, then reaches up and takes his mask off. He can feel the breeze against his face, the way the wind stirs his hair on his forehead. He can smell the sea breeze.

These are things his grandfather would have wanted to do.


End file.
